Project Outcomes
Project Outcomes
List any important outcomes or findings not previously reported:
Use of E-Resources (databases) consistently ranks highest among the statewide library services offered in the POWER Library. Gale OneFile: News allows users to search articles instantly by title, headline, date, author, newspaper section, or other fields. Gale OneFile: News provides access to more than 2,300 major U.S. regional, national, and local newspapers, as well as leading titles from around the world. It also includes thousands of images, radio and TV broadcasts and transcripts.
E-resource subscriptions strongly support educational curriculum but new E-Resources for the general public were added in FY 2023. HSLC handled the procurement for new E-Resources, entertaining ten proposals for products that matched particular subject needs within the following target audiences: elementary school-age students; middle/high school students, and the general public. SIRS Discoverer features the pros and cons of various subjects, supporting student needs to learn about, and evaluate, the merits of a variety of topics.
In FY 2023, users searched E-Resources over 25 million times, viewing nearly 6 million items. Making statewide subscriptions available resulted in each school having access to databases valued at over $56,000. Public libraries with access to POWER Library databases averaged savings in the equivalent of $73,000 in content for each library. HSLC continued to offer a single sign-on (SSO) solutions for easier access to E-Resources by Pennsylvania school students. HSLC offered SSO to school districts and independent schools so that their students had immediate access to POWER Library E-Resources once they logged on with their school email accounts from school or from home. SSO included access with Google, Clever and ClassLink, with over 255 schools and districts using one of more of the SSO options. SSO ensures students have access to POWER Library E-Resources even when school closings occur on short notice, as with inclement weather announcements.
Pennsylvania has a rich and varied history that has been captured in photographs, documents, and artifacts of interest. Digitizing aging and rare historical materials is important to preserving our collective history and cultural heritage, and to making them broadly available for research, study or personal interest.
PA Photos and Documents collections are harvested for inclusion in the Digital Public Library of America (https://dp.la/), making them available for viewing from a national archive. POWER Library items represent 20-25% of the Pennsylvania collection material in DPLA. In FY 2023, four harvests occurred.
The Digital Collections Specialist’s engaged with those interested in contributing to PA Photos and Documents and to provide hands-on training on digitization for the PA Photos and Documents uploading process. Sixteen training sessions were provided last year, to libraries in York County, Johnstown, Abington, Altoona, Berks County and others across the Commonwealth.
The PA Photos and Documents user interface is the open-source platform, Islandora, and is available at: https://powerlibrary.org/collections/. 95 institutions contributed 353 collections to PA Photos and Documents, representing 55 new collections added since last year. Contributors include the State Library, public libraries, public and private schools, academic institutions, and cultural institutions. The content ranges from yearbooks to medicine and health, local newspapers, and library history. Last year, over 3.2 million pages were viewed in PA Photos and Documents, continuing as the most visited service in the POWER Library. The Pennsylvania State Archives’ 586 collections are also made accessible in the PA Photos and Documents service.
Most libraries and small institutions do not have the funds to outsource digitization of historical content. Scan PA is designed to serve as a D-I-Y (Do It Yourself) program for smaller organizations to accomplish digitization on their own. Scan PA recommends an affordable equipment kit at a total cost of less than $1,000 for DIY scan projects. Ten more book scanners were purchased in FY2023 to loan to Scan PA participants, and all five of the program’s Microfilm scanners are on loan to libraries, to handle conversion of newspapers and microfilm to digital format. In FY 2023, special emphasis was made to support collections that feature under-represented communities, which often do not have the professional resources to build and upload collections. To support these organizations, the Scan PA Assistance program was designed and implemented. HSLC sends independent contractors to work specifically with these community groups.
The ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA statewide online catalog is a resource that serves the public, librarians, and incarcerated people in state corrections institutions. It remains the largest physical catalog among the 25 states that use the Auto-Graphics SHAREit product. Known in POWER Library as Books, Movies and More, it includes just under 10 million titles available for borrowing by Pennsylvania public, academic, special collection and high school libraries, saving over one million dollars in purchase costs in a typical year. The Access Pennsylvania catalog hosts over 31 million copies of titles, and the fulfillment rate for requests is 83%.
ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA uses a hybrid statewide catalog. In addition to the holdings found in the physical statewide catalog, holdings of the Pennsylvania Integrated Library System, also known as SPARK, and the Crawford County Federated Library System were added as virtual collections in FY 2022. In FY 2023, Lancaster County, Lycoming County, and Chester County became virtual collections as well. Virtual holdings are visible in real-time, and are one step closer to offering mediated patron-placed holds. Roughly half of the titles in the ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA catalog are now available through virtual connections. Last year over 102,000 titles were requested. With an average hardcover cost of $28.00 this represents a savings of nearly $2.8 million in requests to borrow versus purchase the same material.
The ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA statewide catalog also serves state corrections institutions (SCIs). The full collection is duplicated into standalone systems for SCIs, making the collections of over 800 participating libraries available for borrowing. The SCI ILL system is specially customized to operate without access to the Internet, and requests generate printed interlibrary loan request forms for SCI librarians to mail or fax to potential lending libraries.
The statewide catalog includes a custom catalog just for children in grades K – 5. This kids' catalog is available from the POWER Kids page at https://kids.powerlibrary.org, and serves up search results that are tailored to this audience level only. Jacket covers are especially popular, and the title records help younger children learn how to cite sources for homework and reports.
The POWER Library portal is a one-stop location for online library services available to all residents of Pennsylvania. The URL www.powerlibrary.org connects users to Books, Movies and More (the statewide catalog), Chat with a Librarian (24/7 virtual reference), e-resource subscriptions for personal, educational and business use, and PA Photos and Documents, a digital archive of materials by, for, and about Pennsylvania. The web site has 698 pages designed for use by adults, and students of all ages, including 283 custom pages for librarians. The documents archive holds over 7,200 files. There were over 2 million visits to the POWER Library website in FY 2023.
The main user website includes special content for the end-user, including a Job Resources page (https://powerlibrary.org/job-resources/), a lookup tool called “Find a PA Library” (https://powerlibrary.org/about/find-a-pa-library/) that locates the closest PA libraries to an address provided by the user, and a Resume builder (https://resume-builder.powerlibrary.org/)
In addition to the main user website, custom sites with resources appropriate to their audience levels are available for children in grades Pre-K - Grade 3 at https://kids.powerlibrary.org and for middle and high school students at https://teens.powerlibrary.org. Each of these sites limits the choices to just the resources most helpful to those age groups. POWER Kids and POWER Teens combined for a total of over 418,000 page visits, and over 627,000 page views.
POWER Library integrates a widget that allows users to adapt its content and display it in more accessible ways. On each page is an icon that opens to display accessibility options including: a screen reader, contrast, cursor and fonts size changer, the ability to pause animations and hide images, and a dyslexia-friendly display. In FY 2023, users elected the Dyslexia-friendly font option more than any of the other widget options, followed by use of the screen reader and contrast change options.
POWER Library also serves the professional librarian and support staff communities, with a "For Librarians" Hub, a location for professional support material at: https://librarians.powerlibrary.org/ . This site was re-designed in FY 2023, for better access by librarians in Pennsylvania. Unless restricted by contractual obligations, this content is actually open and available to librarians anywhere. Each POWER Library service available to the public has a corresponding location for professional support in the For Librarians Hub, with documentation, training, participation information, statistics, and more. The For Librarians Hub also serves as the registration system for fall training events.
HSLC administration of the POWER Library program includes regularly issued e-newsletters for both librarians and the public. Past issues are available in the For Librarians section. ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA News was issued at least monthly and featured articles that assisted librarians in using the POWER Library E-Resources, and POWER Library News was issued bi-monthly for the general public, highlighting e-resources, Chat and other POWER Library services. Read them here: https://librarians.powerlibrary.org/c.php?g=1305919&p=10091034.
Although we had hoped to launch a newly designed portal in FY 2023, it was deemed more important to put effort into a streamlined way to view all E-Books across the various vendor platforms in POWER Library.
POWER Library is designed to serve as a statewide online library resource available to Pennsylvania residents. While many residents are comfortable locating information and resources on their own, others benefit from personal interaction with a librarian, who can assist with connecting them to the information they need. Chat with a Librarian is how POWER Library provides that personal reference assistance to Pennsylvania residents. In fact, we go to great lengths to reassure people that they are not conversing with an AI bot!
Pennsylvania residents have the ability to Chat with a Librarian online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Administration of the program includes coordinating staffing of the service, training chat operators in best practices, and monitoring the quality of chat sessions provided. The system is designed to accept chat sessions at the local level first, rolling over to a statewide responder if no local operator is available, and finally, if needed, to a national or international librarian for response.
More than 400 Pennsylvania libraries participated in the service last year, as we capitalized on system and district libraries sharing coverage. Last year, 51% of sessions were picked up in 15 seconds or less, and the average chat session lasted 7 minutes. Local questions always go to local chat operators before they become visible to the statewide cooperative, thereby supporting the sense of connection to a local library. When Pennsylvania librarians are fully occupied responding to chat sessions, or are unavailable, the service draws on librarians from an international pool of participating libraries. However, last year two-thirds of Pennsylvania chat sessions were picked up by POWER Library librarians, and 100% of offline tickets (email follow-ups and SMS) were picked up by Pennsylvania librarians.
Users may ask anything, and are not prompted for any personal information, however if they wish to receive a transcript of the chat session, an email address must be provided. Last year, chat operators fielded over 36,000 sessions.
HSLC focused on user engagement by outreach to audiences of different ages and types. This service was offered with chat, texting and email methods. Exit survey results reveal that 92% of those surveyed rated the information they received as Good, Very Good or Insanely Helpful; 95% would use the service again; 86% found the service on their library’s website or through a teacher; and 59% of users are clustered in the Philadelphia/Pittsburgh areas.
Here are examples of user feedback from the past year, demonstrating the value and impact of the service:
• I was very hesitant, very hesitant, to contact the librarian however it was a wonderful experience and now I know how to use the POWER Library - that's just what I needed and I was also given many other resources that I can use, so big thanks to you
• They were very helpful even though we couldn't find the answer right away. They shared quality information about my topic, and I cannot recommend this service enough!
• I was blown away by the prompt attention to my question, and receipt of a link to an article I was hoping to find. Thank you.
• My Librarian helped me out with a research project! I will definitely be coming back to ask more questions for my project.
• This was my first experience using this feature. I got more information than expected. Awesome!
POWER Library serves two user groups: end-users and librarians. Librarians and teachers must be proficient in how to use POWER Library resources in order to show students and the general public how to use them.
Throughout the year training is scheduled to teach librarians about POWER Library resources, including how to use the statewide catalog and interlibrary loan system, chat reference services, online reference databases, and how to scan and use digitized resources. POWER Library training is designed to be flexible enough to address training needs all year long. Training is conducted annually using a combination of online documentation, in-person or webinar events, and with online recorded videos. The following guidelines are usually used for location selection: 1) Proximity for attendees to travel to/from in one day, 2) venue cost, 3) availability of parking, 4) Wi-Fi service, 5) lunch on-your-own options, and 6) feedback from last year’s training evaluations.
HSLC offered training virtually and in-person during FY 2023. Fall training for POWER Library was conducted in person in 9 locations: Ten in-person training events were held in nine locations in 2023. Training was offered in St. Marys, Grove City, Greensburg, Altoona, Williamsport, Easton, Archbald, Enola, and King of Prussia. A total of 384 people attended the Fall 2022 POWER Library trainings. Fall training offered the following training sessions: What’s New with POWER Library, People, Places, and Things for 100 (Genealogy and History), Supporting Young Learners: POWER Library E-Resources for PreK through Middle School, The Fast and The Furious: Database Lightning Round, The POWER of Communication and Understanding – Inglés No Requerido!, and Resources for All Pennsylvanians: DEIB in POWER Library.
HSLC offers custom training, usually by webinar, when distance does not warrant in-person travel time, or the length of the session does not justify staff travel time, or when weather is poor. In FY 2023, In FY 2023 45 custom training sessions were offered, 37 (82%) of which were conducted virtually. Total attendance for these sessions was 735 librarians.
POWER Academy is a staff training portal with recorded training for POWER Library. These sessions are introductory, to accommodate staff hired throughout any given year. Twenty-four courses introduce the basics for ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA/Interlibrary Loan, Chat with a Librarian, PA Photos and Documents, and Access to E-Resources. In FY 2023, 624 librarians completed POWER Academy training courses. Once they have learned the basics, they are better positioned to assist customers, and are ready for the intermediate level training offered each fall.
Outside of POWER Academy, HSLC provided introductory recordings to POWER Library resources for the general public. These are noted next to the names of E-Resources in the portal.
Evaluation surveys are issued following training to enable HSLC to further improve its courses. The Fall 2023 survey was completed by 328 attendees, representing an 85% response rate. 100% of attendees rated their overall experience with fall training as excellent or good. 70% of those rated their experience as excellent. Since the pandemic, we had success with, and settled on, a training model that uses virtual options for beginners, and in-person events for higher level, and more advanced training.
Please briefly describe the importance of these outcomes and findings for future program planning:
These outcomes provide context and information on the direction the project can take into the future. What has been successful versus what content may be able to be adjusted to better serve the residents of Pennsylvania.
Explain one or two of the most significant lessons learned for others wanting to adopt any facets of this project:
Do you anticipate continuing this project after the current reporting period ends:
Yes
Do you anticipate any change in level of effort in managing this project:
No
Explain:
Do you anticipate changing the types of activities and objectives addressed by the project:
No
Explain:
Was an evaluation conducted for this project:
No
Was a final written evaluation report produced:
Yes
Can the final written evaluation report be shared publicly on the IMLS website:
No
Was the evaluation conducted by project staff (either SLAA or local library) or by a third-party evaluator:
Project Staff
What data collection tools were used for any report outcomes and outputs:
Administrative Records
Review Surveys
Interviews
Focus Groups
Participant Observation
Did you collect any media for the data:
What types of methods were used to analyze collected data:
Statistical Methods
Qualitative Methods
Other:
How were participants (or items) selected:
Census – We selected everyone (or every item).
What type of research design did you use to compare the value for any reported output or outcome:
